Press Kit Requirements

Prizes & Awards

Best Feature DocumentaryOfficial Recognition at the Florida Documentary Film Festival presented by DocMiami and a trophy award. Sponsor:No Sponsor

Category Rules

GENERAL RULES

We only inform of acceptances, however we use the withoutabox.com system feature now to automatically inform you in any case after we made our final festival program decisions. -- We do not return preview material (DVD, videos, press kits etc.). We would prefer DVDs or Blu-Ray disks as a preview format. Please do not stick adhesive labels on your DVD or BR-D because this generally makes the disk useless because of a high rate of dropouts. Please double check your self-burned DVD-Rs and BR-Ds on a regular standalone disk player for burn errors and compatibility issues prior to shipping. No pornographic content will be accepted.

Do not send any master tapes or original media units for preview purposes. We do not insure video/media tapes, and discs. If you would like to have your preview material insured, please take care of yourself and insure your materials. We are not liable for any loss or damage of preview material during shipping. Hence, the risk of loss or damage during shipping is solely and completely on the side of the sender.

Please only submit your entry to our festival when you are really sure you want to show the version you are going to submit, publicly at our festival. Please keep this in mind, especially if you submit and ship preview copies of "works in progress" or still unfinished projects. Once your submission is accepted by the festival there is no option to cancel or withdraw your submission from the festival program. Also, in this case we can not defer your submission to our next festival year. Before the acceptance decision of the festival regarding your submitted entry, your option to defer a submission for our next festival year leads to the need of reentering your submission into our next submission round and also leads to the festival submission fees being charged to you again, at the rate of the new festival year.

If we select your submission for festival presentation we are allowed in any case to theatrically present your submitted production for public exhibition during the 2014 Festival without charge of any screening fees or royalties. This is also true in case you have sold your work to any distributors after your submission date. We do not deal with distributors in any case -- so it is your duty of rights clearance for our festival use of your work as part of any distribution deal you may strike. This is also true in case you have hired a sales agent or sales agency.

We use a server technology for festival presentations/screenings. You give us your allowance to let us copy your work by copying the data from your submitted media to our digital data storage system server plus back-up and fall-back systems. For legal documentation one copy of your submitted work has to remain in the archives of DocMiami International Film Festival.

We are pleased to announce that we will now accept shipment of your screeners via: POSTAL MAIL, UPS, DHL, FEDEX, EMS etc.

Please pack in an envelope as flat as possible. Shipping without postal registration (without "registered mail") and just by regular postal mail is the most efficient.

Please use proper custom's declaration for any shipment (green labeled sticker attached to the envelope, mark "for cultural purposes only - no commercial value"). So when shipping from outside the United States, use the green customs declaration label, e.g. "CN22 - USPS Customs Declaration", and declare only the material value of your preview materials, e.g. "US$ 5 -- 1 DVD -- no commercial value, for festival use only" and stick the green label on the front side of the envelope. Please also note that a declared custom's value of good can NOT BE Zero (e.g. US$ 0.-); even a DVD-R has some worth in custom's understanding. So please declare something and not Zero.

Sorry, no submission fee refunds possible. Submission fee must be paid prior to the arrival of preview material. -- We prefer credit card payment. With your submission you declare that you are authorized to submit the contribution, that you own all the rights necessary for public screenings and that public screenings of your movie at the Florida Documentary Film Festival Edition presented by DocMiami International Film Festival (plus possible program repetitions) are free of charge for the festival administration.

Sorry, we can not grant waivers for submission fees because we are also a true independent project and we are not interested at all in being "engaged" in third party sponsor interests and their influences. In case you are a very poor film maker from a very poor nation, please contact us first by email before presenting a "fee waiver" in your submission. Submissions presenting a "fee waiver" in the submission form without having us contacted first, will be disqualified and deleted automatically and will be removed from the selection process.

In case your submission is accepted to the festival we might publish your contact, personal and filmographic data you have entered into the withoutabox.com festival submission system. With your submission you declare to accept the fact that we are allowed to publish those data (e.g. in the festival catalogue both in print and online, festival reference on disk, on the festival web site etc.).

Special Offer From our festival community partner:

"High-Tech Productions is offering 10% off for all DocMiami Filmmakers on the following services: DVD Duplication, Tape to Disk Transfers and Foreign DVD Conversion: Any DVD, Any Format, Any Region. Mention DocMiami when placing your order to receive your special discount. Visit their website at: www.High-TechProductions.com"